Thursday, January 31, 2013

My head is not yet full

I was having a few drinks with some comic-literate people a few weeks
ago, and talk inevitably swerved in the direction of the Nth Man. A late
eighties military-porn comic with disturbingly metaphysical
machinations, the Nth Man only lasted about a year, but is still fondly
remembered by some.

Well, by me, anyway. I have every issue in a
box behind me and after talking about it again here, I’m probably going
to end up digging it out and reading the whole damn thing again tonight.
I really dig the action scenes, and the way the title character
remained unmovably driven, even when reality goes all skew-whiff

So
when somebody in the group was adamant that it was the work of Chuck
Dixon, I was even more unwavering in my argument that it was written by
Larry Hama, because I knew I was right, and didn’t have to resort to
Wikipedia to verify it. The fact that the Nth Man was created by Larry
Hama and Ron Wagner was an indisputable fact, lodged away somewhere in my brain.

So
I had to convince everybody that Hama was the proper writer, by showing
off my Hama knowledge, dwelling mostly on his GI Joe and Wolverine
work, but also making a point of mentioning his appearance on M*A*S*H.

When I was done, I saw a familiar look on one guy’s face, and heard the inevitable question – how did I know all this shit?

And I just felt like somebody from Eltingville. I don’t know how I know all this shit.

I just do.

I’m sometimes concerned by the amount of trivia in my head, at the
amount of completely useless bullshit bouncing around my brain-box. This
can’t be healthy.

Without resorting to any reference work, I
could give fairly details biographies of minor characters like Drax the
Destroyer and Dum Dum Dugan, and I know who created Nightcrawler and
Shanna The She Devil. I could name most of the members of the Suicide
Squad, and I know Ambush Bug’s real name.

I know what comics were edited by Dez Skinn and Archie Goodwin, and I know who published Mister X.

I can still name a half
a dozen characters from Ghost World without cracking open the book, and
if you gave me a piece of paper, I could probably name at least three
dozen residents of Palomar. I know more about Knuckles the Malevolent
Nun than is really healthy and, given time, could probably name every
single series that ever appeared in 2000ad. In order.

Is this healthy, having a brain full of this stuff? And if it isn’t, how come I keep shovelling more in?

I do sometimes run into people who have far more comic knowledge than me, and I would only do okay in any Eltingville trivia-off. And when it comes to wider society and other pursuits, I’m far from alone. I have friends who possess breathtaking knowledge of music or wrestling or a particular sports team. Many people have incredible enthusiasms. And even though I know a lot about film and television, comics are my thing.

This isn’t so bad, and I only feel a freak about the amount of comic shit I know now and then. I’ve also just been listening to an old-ish interview with Patton Oswalt, where he talked about the virtues of being enthusiastic about things – even massively unimportant things – because who wants to really walk through life with nothing more than a shrug and a ‘meh’?

But surely all this information could have been put to good use. If I had dedicated that mind-storage space to academic work, or towards more creative endeavours, who knows what could have happened? Do I really need to know all this crap? Shouldn’t I have used that energy to improve my station in life?

On the other hand, it doesn’t do any real harm, and I’m always up for
more. I recently bought a bunch of Comics Journal back issues, and have
used them to pour even more data into my head.

(A brief aside
concerning the surprisingly small world of comics in this part of the
world – I bought the Journals blind in a Trademe auction on the
internet, and the seller turned out to be the gorgeous Matt Emery, who
was using the sales cash to get more of those lovely Dan Dare books he
was talking about here. How ‘bout that?)

I just finished reading
issue TCJ #210, an issue from 1999 which I’d been after for ages,
largely because it featured the fairly controversial 100 Best Comics of
the Century. I knew that the list had pissed off a lot of people, but
I’d never read it for myself, until I got this chance.

And I
loved it – it was a curiously dated list, and it’s fascinating to look
at what was fashionable in comics criticism at the tail end of the 20th
century, and I kinda wish the Journal folk would do another one, just to
compare the differences (For instance, I doubt Understanding Comics
would crack the top 50 again) The list is also full of really good
writing about really good comics, but the thing I loved most about the
list was the number of comics I hadn’t even heard of.

I’ve now
found room in my brain for things I didn’t even know existed a week ago.
There are now files in the system inside my head for Harvey Kurtzmann’s
Jungle Book and Jules Feiffer’s Tantrum and Jack Jackson’s Los Tejanos
and Carol Tyler’s The Hannah Story and Krigstein/Feldstein’s Master Race
and Kurtsman/Elder’s Goodman Beaver and Justin Green’s Binky Brown
Meets The Holy Virgin Mary. And those files definitely need further
elaboration.

To be fair, those were the only comics on the list I
hadn’t actually heard of before, but that’s a shocking lack of
knowledge on my part. I thought I knew a lot, but I don’t know shit, and
that’s something to rectify.

It isn’t a limitless pit inside there, and some things inevitably slip out. I’m a lot vaguer on things like Ron Marz’s Green Lantern comics, or the finer points of the Omega Men, than I used to be. I get a sadistic enjoyment out of reading old issues of Wizard I bought in 1994, because they often remind me of things I had forgotten all about.

Things fade over time, but it’s only the mediocre and bland comics that get forgotten. I never forget all the good stuff.

Unfortunately, my definition of the “good stuff” is disturbingly broad, encompassing everything from deeply esoteric art comics to the latest X-Men comics, so while some stuff slips away, most of it just gets piled up on top of old knowledge, stretching the brain’s capacity to fit in more information about Quentin Quire.

In real life, I do try to hide how much bullshit I really know – one of the reasons for this blog is an opportunity to show off how much crap I know, without freaking out normal folk with my babbling on about Jim Sterenko or the comics in Doctor Who magazine or the history of Jonah Hex.

But sometimes I can’t help myself, especially when somebody is patently wrong about a known fact. I won’t be able to help myself then, or any time the talk turns to the Nth Man again.